21st Century Corporate Citizenship

A Practical Guide to Delivering Value to Society and your Business

Dave Stangis, Katherine Valvoda Smith

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781787147560
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

21st Century Corporate Citizenship is a practical guide to building a successful business in the modern day. It is a book about leveraging all the tools, trends and assets at the disposal of business to drive bottom-line results, value chain resiliency, productivity, innovation, long-term shareowner value, and benefit for the community. This is the book that leverages corporate citizenship as a value-creating enterprise and translates sustainability, corporate responsibility, and social impact to help you create the most successful business possible in tomorrow's competitive landscape. For the up and coming manager, this book is the crib sheet to the 21st century MBA that you can't get (yet) in business schools. The tools and insights presented are valuable for every business person thinking about how to differentiate their company and maximize business and social value—from the sole proprietor to those working in a global megacorporation—the concepts explored are 'must do' for those working for manufacturing B2B or B2C companies that are managing complex supply chains, global operations, and corporate reputation. This 'how-to' handbook presents a step-by-step process aimed at helping you create the most successful business possible in the 21st century competitive landscape, empowering corporate citizenship professionals to accelerate their credibility within their company as an effective contributor who understands their company's strategy and who creates value.

SECTION 1

LAYING THE FOUNDATION AND CREATING YOUR BASIC TOOLS

1

CONNECTING CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP TO BUSINESS PURPOSE

What’s the purpose of the company you work for? Stop and think about that for a moment. Why was it originally created, even if that was many years ago? This can be an interesting question to ask, and a difficult one to answer. There’s a very good reason to make the effort. In the process of exploring these issues, you’ll learn how to design a corporate citizenship strategy and program that is relevant, comprehensive and — most importantly — that works. This in turn will enable you to become more knowledgeable and successfully influential within your company.

All successful businesses were created originally to fill a market need or solve a societal problem. This is the core of the purpose. The purpose of your company could have been to make life more convenient, to provide something essential, or even to create an exciting experience. Depending on how long your corporation has been around it may still be providing that same solution; alternatively, the company may now be selling products and services that address problems that did not exist at your founding with solutions that were unimaginable. At its core, a successful company delivers something to the world that only it can provide in its distinctive way. It’s a special point of differentiation from its competitors. Purpose is the reason your company exists. It is related to vision and precedes strategy. When you have your company’s core purpose clear, it should guide your corporate citizenship.

Let’s look at some sample company websites to better understand the concept of purpose (Table 1).

Table 1: Company Business Purpose

This is the Company’s Purpose	This is How They Realize Their Purpose
“3M is a global innovation company that never stops inventing.”	“Over the years, our innovations have improved daily life for hundreds of millions of people all over the world. We have made driving at night easier, made buildings safer, and made consumer electronics lighter, less energy-intensive and less harmful to the environment. We even helped put a man on the moon.”
“Campbell Soup Company’s purpose: Real Food That Matters For Life’s Moments.”	“For generations, people have trusted Campbell to provide authentic, flavorful and readily available foods and beverages that connect them to each other, to warm memories, and to what’s important today.”
“McDonald’s reaches customers with enjoyable meal experiences wherever they are.”	“McDonald’s is innovating new tastes and choices, while staying true to customer favorites. Modern service. Personal engagement. Great-tasting burgers and fries. Building on our commitments to our people, our communities, and our world.”

The purposes of the example companies have changed relatively little over time. It’s the way they realize their purposes that’s evolved, as their operating contexts have changed over the years.

It’s not always easy to uncover this core purpose, but if you can get it right you’ll have a solid foundation that provides the justification and boundaries for your business strategy and corporate citizenship program. What’s more, unlocking a company’s core purpose can unleash many new ideas, helping you to think more imaginatively and broadly about how corporate citizenship can contribute to your company’s purpose and unique ideal. Your company’s purpose is here to stay, representing the value it provides to your customers year after year. It’s not a program or a campaign, it’s for life.

Think about Ford Motor Co., for example: the business was originally created to provide affordable transport for everyday people, and it still does that today. Ford changed its business model to adapt, like all companies do. It went from mass-producing a single model in a single color, to customizing individual models and features and vehicle types (sedans, coupes, trucks, hybrids). In today’s sharing economy some consumers either can’t afford or aren’t interested in owning a car, but they still want to be able to use one from time to time. So Ford has developed partnerships with technology companies, and now leases vehicles to ride-sharing systems as well as selling them to individual owners. The company is still true to its original purpose of giving people an affordable way to travel from place to place, just not in exactly the same way it used to.

We mentioned McDonald’s in our examples above. Their original purpose was to serve fast, family-friendly meals on the go, to the increasingly mobile society of mid-century America. When McDonald’s was founded people ate out less, mainly at lunch and dinner; McDonald’s therefore came up with the solution of burgers and fries. They’ve interpreted that purpose across both decades and geographic regions. As work hours became longer and more women worked outside the home there was higher demand for meals on the go at different times of day, so McDonald’s developed a popular breakfast menu and expanded its service hours. In the United States, the breakfast menu is so popular that McDonald’s now serves breakfast all day. McDonald’s expects to have more than 450 restaurants in India by 2020,¹ and none of them serve beef. You can see how they’ve interpreted their purpose through a changing context and applied their core competencies (replicable inventory and fast, easy preparation) to new contexts; if they had thought about their company purpose as “getting customers fast burgers,” they wouldn’t have had the flexibility to apply these skills to changing times and environments.

After all, in the 1950s and 1960s “fast, affordable, family-friendly meals on the go” were defined very differently to how they are today. In those days delivering hot, tasty, and consistent burgers and fries from clean stores, being supportive of the community with gifts in kind, and supporting the local little leagues, was sufficient to fulfill their purpose. But as consumer expectations changed over time and geography, and as their business grew, McDonald’s had to maintain their core competencies in menu planning, purchasing, and training, and add new ones in nutrition, wellness, and environmentally friendly packaging. Now they have wellness initiatives for families to understand better the nutritional profiles of their menu items, and offer training and development to employees (Warren Buffett has called the company a gateway to future employment). Their commitments have changed as their context has changed, but their purpose has not.

WHAT THIS HAS TO DO WITH YOU

Why is your company’s core purpose of any concern to you? You want to set up environmental programs, develop an employee volunteerism strategy, and help your organization use its assets to do more good in the world.

It’s important because if your strategy, programs, goals, and metrics aren’t tied to your company’s purpose and strategy, you lose the opportunity to reinforce the purpose and support the strategy. How can you expect to get resources and enlistment to execute if you’re not advancing your company’s purpose and strategy?

If you bumped into your CEO or another senior executive in the hallway, could you explain what your business is trying to achieve right now, with what resources, and who’s involved? Could you name the stakeholders who have a say in all this (the people affected by the strategy, such as employees, customers, suppliers, and investors)? Would you be able to identify your corporation’s key customers, what investors think about the company, and how easy (or otherwise) it would be to engage employees to act on your corporate citizenship vision?

If you couldn’t do this, you’re not alone. Most people in your company wouldn’t be able to, even if they were at a very senior level. In fact, after you’ve worked through this chapter, you’ll be more knowledgeable about your own firm than most anyone else in it. How’s that for a great start?

BUSINESS PURPOSE, VISION, AND STRATEGY

By the way, if you’re wondering what is the difference between a company’s purpose, vision, and strategy; it’s this: purpose is the motivation for all it does; vision is a vivid, easily communicated image for how the world will be different if it’s successful in achieving its objectives; and strategy is the plan of action for how it will compete in the market to achieve this vision. Purpose is the reason you’re undertaking your strategy, and usually doesn’t change. Strategy changes as customers, consumers, and markets evolve. Later on we’ll look at strategy in more detail; for now, just know that it springs from your corporate purpose.

HOW DOES YOUR CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP PROGRAM SUPPORT YOUR COMPANY’S PURPOSE AND STRATEGY?

Your company has a core purpose, and so does your corporate citizenship program. Can you describe what it is? How would your company’s customers describe it? What would your employees say about it? How about your suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders?

You can sit in your office and ruminate on this, or you can tap into the wisdom of co-workers — just interview them. Ask what success would look like for them. Their words are important here, as they will likely use different terminology than you. A fellow employee they might say, “I love coming to work because what this company’s doing is making a real impact.” An investor on Wall Street would never say, “Well, it’s great they have a robust volunteer program.” They may, however, note your company has a low staff turnover and does a great job of managing its people. Can your program contribute to that strength? Data tell us there is a strong positive correlation of volunteerism and employee engagement with low turnover, so you probably do contribute to the Wall Street investor’s assessments of the quality of management and stability of the company.²

To inspire people you need to paint a vivid picture of your corporate citizenship strategy, and how you intend to fulfill and measure it. At this stage, you’re simply collecting information; imagine you have a pile of “corporate purpose” on your desk, and a stack of “what I’m going to do about it.” You also have a collection of words and images to describe your purpose to the people that matter.

You should be able to describe success from your perspective, but much more importantly be able to describe it also from the CEO’s perspective, from the board of directors’ perspective, from the CFO’s perspective, and from the chief HR person’s perspective, etc. Getting these people on board with your program and how it advances corporate purpose and strategy is what will make your corporate citizenship program stick and be sustainable in the long term.

WHAT MAKES YOUR COMPANY UNIQUE?

Remember when we talked about what makes your company different and special at the beginning of this chapter? You may have wondered what this means for the corporation you work for.

Notes from the Field

Purpose as True North

Shannon Schuyler is Principal, Chief Purpose Officer and Corporate Responsibility Leader at PwC and President of PwC Charitable Foundation

Corporate citizenship — both as a guiding principle and as a structured program that companies employ continues, as it must, to evolve. At our firm, like many, we began with philanthropy then developed a formal Corporate Responsibility (CR) program and more recently focused on shared value.

To keep up with the unprecedented pace of change and stay socially and business-relevant, companies must identify ways to leverage their core strengths and capabilities to deliver impact at the intersection of business and society. The most highly effective corporate citizenship integrates the firm’s purpose, values, business operations, and CR activities to drive positive change and deliver scalable impact. Ultimately, the scale of a solution is what matters most. Not how much or how many, but how broadly and deeply.

As a global financial services firm with teams of experts working on the development and deployment of fin tech solutions, including block chain (digital or cryptocurrency), we recognized a unique role for PwC in addressing a serious global problem: the lack of speed, low transparency, fraud, and waste associated with disaster relief efforts. The disaster recovery market is a vital resource for people all over the world: there are more than 140 million victims of natural disasters every year (http://reliefweb.int/report/world/annual-disaster-statistical-review-2014-numbers-and-trends) and while there is always a strong outpouring of financial support to help those affected, roughly six to up to 20 percent of all money allocated for disaster relief is lost to inefficiency and corruption (PwC “Cryptocurrency disaster relief consortium” — Development Launch Plans — Power Point presentation/May 2016; and “Fact Sheet” provided to Megan Discullio by Paul Dunay in May 2016).

The proprietary block chain and smart contracts technology we were developing for our clients (a decentralized ledger that enables anyone in the network to view any and all transactions from the transfer of funds to the transport of supplies) could also revolutionize the way that humanitarian assistance is managed during natural disasters. We created our Cryptocurrency and Disaster Recovery & Relief Solution (CDRC) as a pilot effort to test our unique prototype, refine the solution, and harness an emerging technology to solve a critical social issue. Our CDRC service is a more effective way to ensure that donated funds get to the right places and are used for the right purposes — enhancing transparency and trust. The effort reflects our purpose, which is to solve important problems and build trust in society, engages our people in meaningful work that can have visible and broad impact for multiple stakeholders, and demonstrates the capacity of business innovation to drive systemic change.

Thus applying PWC’s distinctive strengths and expertise to meet a global need and build resilience in society delivers economic, social, and environmental impact and shifts our perspective from “doing good works” to working for the greater good.

There are thousands of service companies, hundreds of food companies, and dozens of automotive companies and airlines, but it’s what they each do differently from the others that gives them their competitive advanta...